1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system, and in particular, to a computer implemented method for email communication. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a computer implemented method, system, and computer usable program code for dynamic grouping of email recipients.
2. Description of the Related Art
An increasing number of users use email systems for communicating with other users. Often, a user may send an email to one or more recipients. Presently, a user may create groups of recipients or may reuse pre-created recipient groups to send an email message to the member recipients included of those groups.
Frequently, the recipients and recipient groups with whom the user may exchange emails may reach unmanageable numbers. To manage the recipients and pre-defined recipient groups, various software applications, such as email address book, contacts lists, databases, and directories are available to a user. However, the user has to invest time and effort, sometimes repetitive effort, to manage the recipients' and recipient groups' information in such applications.
Some applications provide a predictive display of email addresses that match a partial email address as the user begins to type a recipient's email address. Still, the user must recall at least a name of the recipient if not the email address, and begin typing the name or the email address in order to use such predictive features.
On the other hand, predefined recipient groups assume that a user will always want to send an email to each member of the group when the user selects the group. Should the user desire to send the email to only some members of the group, the user has to expand the group to reveal individual address, of which there can be many. Then the user has to selectively eliminate the addresses the user does not wish to use for the email.
A common email user knows that editing a predefined group as needed for each email can be cumbersome, prone to errors, and vastly repetitive when the user sends several emails. A common email user also knows that including recipients in an email one recipient at a time can also be time consuming and sometimes frustrating.
Some applications may form grouping of recipients by some commonly defined criterion. For example, an application may group those users in a group who are in geographical proximity of one another. However, such grouping is also largely predefined and the criteria for grouping predefined.
Most email applications also allow a “Reply All” feature whereby the user may respond to all recipients of an original email. However, such features still require the user to select, add, or eliminate recipients manually if the user desires not to reply to all recipients of the original email. Therefore, a system, computer implemented method, and computer usable program product for dynamic grouping of email recipients will be beneficial.